Written by Jennifer Brown. The players struggle with the emotional fallout of Neil’s weight gain. We join the teams as they mope back into the house after Neil’s
sabotage. Most everyone’s in tears and Neil’s all but ostracized. Seems
not much of anybody can make themselves okay with what he did
(purposefully gaining 17 pounds in a strategic move last week). “It was
to maliciously send someone home,” Neil’s teammate, Isabeau says, her
disgust echoed throughout the house. “I hope he gets what’s coming to
him,” Julie adds. Kae’s tearful, packing her things, threatening to go
home, Hollie’s “so disappointed in so many people here,” yet Neil is
kicked back on his bed feeling bad, but not like he’s done anything
wrong. To him, the gain was about strategy, and isn’t half of this game
about strategy?

The trainers are having to work overtime to fix this mess. Bob tries to pump up Kae, who tells him she almost ditched Loser the night before, reminding her, “Remember the good person you are. This doesn’t define you.” Jillian, too, is trying to rally her team, in her tough-love Jillian way. “No pouting, no sulking!” she commands, but she may be too late – they look both pouty and sulky already. It gets worse when Amy pulls Jillian aside and admits to her that she’d given in to pressure by Neil to throw the last weigh-in. Jillian looks both ticked off and mind-blown by the new level the game has taken. She grabs Amy’s hand and helps her remember why she’s at the campus in the first place. “Get out of the game!” she says. Only Kim seems to be having a good day, just thrilled that the drama is not touching her team. Her team is focused and energetic, hitting the gym without tears and backbiting. She hopes this means a good week is ahead.

Soon it’s Challenge time and the teams show up on the beach for Challenge: Endurance. They are confronted with three giant see-saws, where they’ll have to sit and hold up their own weight. The winning team, Alison tells them, will get the contents of the little wooden box in her hand – contents that will change the course of the game.

The teams sit on their see-saws and sweat in the sun as they struggle to hold up their own weight. The first team to lose its grip is Neil and Isabeau; they plummet into the water. Amy tries to rally her team as they begin to struggle, but it doesn’t work. They, too, fall in, leaving Nicole, Bryan, and Ryan as the winners! Much cheering ensues (two blue team members have won a challenge at last!), and the winners collect their box, which holds a pass that allows each member of the team to have a vote in the next elimination (rather than one vote for the whole team). This is a huge advantage, as there are only 5 votes total in the next elimination and the winning team will cast three of them! There’s a catch, though – the winning team will have to stay above the yellow line to use the pass. Never was the last-chance workout so important.

But first, Bob spends a little alone time, stretching and meditating with Kae, who’s still struggling with her emotions. “Kae is breaking records in this house and the pressure it’s putting on both of us is tremendous,” Bob says.

The teams hit the gym for their last-chance workout, and everyone’s hitting it hard. Bob’s going especially hard on Neil, not giving him an inch of slack. Everyone works hard today and everyone seems to be feeling confident.

Night falls and it’s weigh-in time. Alison tells the teams that they have, so far, lost an incredible combined 750+ pounds (woot! woot!), and then begins calling teams to the scale.

Neil’s up first, hat in hand. He steps on the scale and finds that he’s lost a whopping 33 pounds this week! There are no cheers, no applause. In fact, several people look quite disgusted. Neil tells them all that he’s had a revelation – that he’s sorry and that he understands that the only way to win is by beating the scale. “Saying sorry doesn’t always fix it,” Hollie tells the camera. Neil’s going to have to keep proving himself, it looks like. Isabeau steps up next, only to find that she hasn’t lost a single pound this week. She doesn’t appear too upset about it. “It’s only fair that [Neil] saved me this week,” she says.

One by one the others are called up, and everyone else has lost this week. Some, like Nicole (-9) and Julie (-6), are amazed and excited by their loss and jump up and down. Others, such as Kae (-6), have a difficult time getting excited, as they fear falling behind the yellow line. In the end it’s Hollie, David, and Kae who fall below the line, giving the challenge winners use of the handy pass-in-a-box, and landing themselves in the hot seat in the elimination room.

In the elimination room, Neil eats a little more crow and apologizes once again for what he did last week, and then the voting commences. Isabeau and Neil, citing alliances with other players, vote for David. So does Team Bill, Julie, and Amy. Bryan, however, votes for Kae, remarking that his choice was “totally a personal decision”, taking the heat off of David for a moment. In the end, however, it’s Nicole’s vote, which she casts tearfully, saying her reasoning was that she thought the person she was voting for would be okay at home, that gives someone the boot. She reveals her vote,for David.

David bursts into tears and there’s not a dry eye in the room (including in my living room, I might add). He’s got lots of inspirational things to say to the other players, and leaves, saying, “I’m not going to leave with my head down. I’ve got too much to be proud of.”

We get to see David show up at home for the first time, right smack in the middle of a birthday party. There are screams and tears, David’s wife all but overwhelmed, telling him over and over again how great he looks.

Today David has lost 105lbs total and looks but a shadow of his former self. “The only way to get there,” he tells us, “is hard work.”

Next on The Biggest Loser: Neil surprises everyone again. The campus goes green.

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2 Responses to “The Biggest Loser – David Gets the Vote”

I couldn’t bare but to cry when I saw that Dave’s team was up for elimination, no thanks to Neil. Dave deserved to stay and play fair like the rest of the guys. What Neil did was a minipulation and he should have been eliminated. This type of manipulation should not be allowed.

I think this show goes WAY to far in the wrong direction! The voting plays with these peoples lifes! It should not be formated like those other reality shows – but the least to lose weight by body mass should leave. Neil has no bussiness being on the show to begin with.